I enjoyed the movie very much too, and the imagery was really superb, just what I pictured while reading the book. One of the few occassions when I didn't think the book was automatically better than the movie, because the book and the movie are both lovely in their own right and each has it's own dimension of beauty - different in some ways, and yet the same in some ways. Really well done, in my opinion.

I watched Paul a couple of days ago, and I actually really enjoyed it. I started off watching it just for Simon Pegg, because I can't resist Simon Pegg, but it was actually quite a lot of fun. Nick Frost is great in it too, and I find I like Seth Rogen a lot more as an alien. I think he'd be a better actor if he actually was an alien.

"There's a hell of a good universe next door, let's go!" e e cummings

"And the new day was a great big fish." Terry Pratchett

"WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?" Terry Pratchett (yes again, I'm afraid. He's my absolute favourite author)

Watched the premier film about the upstanding Scottish character, Trainspotting.

"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed'? Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.'" - Carl Sagan

"To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection." - Henri Poincaré

"I don't mean to sound bitter, cynical and cruel; but I am, so that's how it comes out." Bill Hicks."One should not believe everything one reads on the internet." Abraham Lincoln"Are you OK?" daftbeaker (<-- very good question, people should ask it more often.)

The Expendables 2... a group of old action stars try a last earner off their fading pulling power. Worried they may not carry the movie on their own, they enlist the help of some more current action heroes. Onset of senility sees them pinching each other's alter-ego-super-hero character's lines and hardy-har-har references to movies from their hay-days, possibly to remind themselves and the audience who they are. As usual, brute firepower and inacurate aim from the enemy gets them through to the paycheque.

Very good for the most part, bad in small parts, slightly wrong in other small parts.

First up: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench and Javier Bardem are all proper actors. Put any two of them in a room with a decent script and the proper lighting and you get a real properly acted scene. There are a few of those. Javier Bardem is a great Bond villain, and I still maintain that Daniel Craig and Judi Dench are brilliant as Bond and M: the history, the friction, the affection, it's all there. Motorbike chase over rooftops? - check. Exploding tube trains (and MI6 headquarters)? - check. Big set piece at the end? They blew up part of the set of Harry Potter* - question mark.

It's the 50th anniversary of Dr. No, so there were a lot of retrospective jokes about "is it time to take a desk job?", "the world of espionage is so hi-tech today, I can do more damage with my laptop in ten minutes than you can do with your gun in an hour", that sort of thing. A couple of references would have been enough, it dragged on far too much and got in the way of the story. The original Aston Martin DB5 made an appearance. Oh, baby...

I think Sam Mendes was trying to remake Moonraker or Live and Let Die, one of the big Roger Moore epics. That is not the Bond that Daniel Craig is: he's an actor, a Bond who uses his fists, who can get injured, who has his loyalties tested and his reputation besmirched and has to recover them. That is where a Daniel Craig Bond movie should be pitched, not "Hey! Let's blow some more shit up! It will cover up the lack of acting! Or Story!"

Naomie Harris is the new Moneypenny. She is spot on, and the back-story fits with the flirting and the history. She gives Bond a shave: this scene is more genuinely sensual than any in-the-sack scene in any Bond movie. Seriously. Also, she's a babe - schu-wing!!!

Bérénice Marlohe as Sévérine on the other hand... She looks like she got dressed in the dark and got me to put her make-up on. When I was drunk. She does not develop as a character, and then she dies in a haphazard and meaningless manner. That's back to the '70's mysogynistic attitude that Bond movies used to have. Kill her like you mean it, if you have to kill her.

Overall, I liked it, but I suspect Barbara Broccoli lacks the instincts that her dad had in spades. He really knew what he wanted from a Bond movie - I think she's thinking too much about legacy and maintaining the brand, and not enough about reinventing the brand and making the best movies she could.

*spoiler alert! Skyfall is the name of the house in the middle of Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands where Bond's parents lived and where he grew up until he was orphaned. The big set piece was blowing it up / burning it down. This was actually presented in a fairly realistic and not completely fantastical way. While I applaud that, does realism really belong in a Bond Movie?

"I don't mean to sound bitter, cynical and cruel; but I am, so that's how it comes out." Bill Hicks."One should not believe everything one reads on the internet." Abraham Lincoln"Are you OK?" daftbeaker (<-- very good question, people should ask it more often.)

Oh, FFS, it's only a movie. There's no reason to cry like a child over it.

Excuse me, gotta go now.

"I don't mean to sound bitter, cynical and cruel; but I am, so that's how it comes out." Bill Hicks."One should not believe everything one reads on the internet." Abraham Lincoln"Are you OK?" daftbeaker (<-- very good question, people should ask it more often.)

You forgot to mention the new Q played by Ben Whishaw (one of my favourite actors of the year) which I thought was one of the highlights of the film. Ben played Q like a character straight out of the 'IT crowd'.

The smoke wafted gently in the breeze across the poop deck and all seemed right in the world.